Published on Axis of Logic, by President Manuel Zelaya. Granma International. July 5, 2009.

Compañeros and compañeras;
Honduran compatriots:

This is your President Manuel Zelaya Rosales speaking to you.

I want to tell you that my life’s destiny is bound to the destiny of the Honduran people.

Compañeros and compañeras;

In the morning of June 28, while I was getting ready to go to exercise my vote in a referendum promoted by the Honduran people, I was the victim of outrages, of assault and violation, kidnapping; I was taken prisoner and expelled from my country by the military forces of Honduras; military forces that today have lent themselves to and are in complicity with the voracious elite that is exploiting and asphyxiating our people. They are obeying its orders, they are not defending our nation or our democracy.

This cruel blow is against the Honduran nation and has exposed before the world that in Honduras there is now a species of barbarity and persons who have no awareness of the damage that they are inflicting on our country and its future generations.

Via this means of communication I am urging that we continue with the participation of the people, the principal actors in our democracy and in the solutions that there can be to the major problems of poverty and inequality that our nation is experiencing …

… I am prepared to make any effort, any sacrifice to obtain the freedom that our country needs.

Either we are free or we will be permanent slaves, if we lack the valor to defend ourselves!

Do not carry weapons, no weapons! Practice what I have always preached: non-violence. Let them be the ones to bear violence, weapons and repression, and I will make the coup perpetrators responsible for every life, for every person, for the physical integrity of everybody, and for the dignity of the Honduran people.

We are going to appear at the international airport of Honduras in Tegucigalpa with various presidents, various members of the international community and, on Sunday, this Sunday, we shall be in Tegucigalpa embracing each other, accompanying each other, in order to assert what we have so much defended in our lives, which is the will of God through the will of the people.